13-10-23 US Dept of Defense: - the epitome of conceit? Fake arrival ceremonies for dead soldiers/remains?

I am at loss of words to find the right description for the story below... jz

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OpEdNews Op Eds 10/22/2013 at 13:53:55 Fake By Clancy Sigal (about the author)

opednews.com

Flickr - The U.S. Army - Rendering honors at Dover AFB by Wikipedia

Since Vietnam, the Missing/Killed In Action/Prisoner of War issue has been extremely emotional especially for families of those soldiers allegedly "left behind".  Some POW/MIA activists see a conspiracy by the U.S. govt & the Vietnamese to withhold the "real truth" that many American POWs were never released but still are in  bestial captivity.

It's hard for the Pentagon to lose their lying habit.  Keep this story in mind, just reported by Bill Dedman of NBC News,  whenever you read or hear a Pentagon/Dept of Defense "statement of fact".  (I've edited it.)

Boiled down, the DoD has been holding fake "Arrival Ceremonies", complete with honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins of human remains of the honored dead off a "just arrived" cargo plane.  Grieving veterans and MIA families were led to believe that they're witnessing the final return of Americans killed in World War Two, Vietnam and Korea. 

After 7 years of this charade, the Pentagon now confesses it's all a put on.  No honored dead were in fact arriving on planes that couldn't fly anyway so had to be towed into the hanger.

"The ceremonies also have been known, at least among some of the military and civilian staff here, as The Big Lie.

"The Pentagon statement did not explain why the rituals were called "arrival ceremonies" if no one was arriving, or why the public had been told that remains removed that morning from the lab were about to go to the lab to "begin the identification process."

"The Defense Department has used the arrival ceremonies as publicity tools, posting videos of the "arrival" on its website, on YouTube and on Facebook.

Jesse Baker, an Air Force veteran of World War II and Korea living in Honolulu, said he has been to more than 50 of these ceremonies.  "If I have been fooled, I am going to be a very pissed-off citizen, because I've been going for years," Baker said.  "And I know a lot of guys who are going to be pissed off. ...

Baker tried to make sense of why America's Department of Defense would work so hard to trick him and other veterans. 

The Pentagon said its own words, used since 2006, had led to the ceremonies being "misinterpreted" as arrivals.

The Pentagon would not answer when asked when (the general in charge) and other military officers became aware that the public was being misled.

Damn them.